(Rail line leading into Auschwitz) At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, supposedly due to the war in Gaza, which is erroneous as the phenomenon was increasing long before Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7th.  At the same time, we recognize Holocaust Remembrance day which commemorates  the annihilation of Jews during World War II.  It is fitting that at this time Josef Debreczeni’s memoir of his time in “the land of Auschwitz,” COLD CREMATORIUM: REPORTING FROM THE LAND OF AUSCHWITZ has been rereleased. Originally published in 1950 it was never translated ..read more

(Elie Wiesel) Before I turn to my review of Joseph Berger’s latest work, ELIE WIESEL: CONFRONTING THE SILENCE I must put forth a disclaimer concerning the subject.  First, my father’s side of the family lived north of Krakow, Poland before World War II about two hours from Auschwitz.  Some were fortunate and left before the war and went to Palestine, France, and the United States.  The majority did not and perished in the gas chambers.  This has always brought me to an uncomfortable place having been educated in an orthodox Yeshiva in Brooklyn and grown up with children of ..read more

(Rudi Vrba) Two words dominate Jonathan Freedland’s new book, THE ESCAPE ARTIST: THE MAN WHO BROKE OUT OF AUSCHWITZ TO WARN THE WORLD; trust and escape.  These terms would dominate the life of Walter Rosenberg, a Slovakian Jew who along with three others would escape from Auschwitz in 1944.  Only seventeen in February 1942, Rosenberg was rounded up by the Nazis which would begin a horrible journey that would culminate in being deported with his family to Poland.  Passing through Novaky, a Slovak transit camp, he would wind up in Majdanek and then on to Auschwitz by June 1942 whe ..read more

(Pope Pius XII) For many, one of the most polarizing figures of the Second World War was Pope Pius XII.  Up until 2019 the Vatican archives did not allow access to most of the documents related to Pius XII’s actions before and during the war.  Under the current leadership of Pope Francis, the archive has been made available to historians and has brought about a reassessment of Pius XII’s relationship with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in addition to his attitude toward the Holocaust.  Until the opening of the archive, historians were of two minds ..read more

(Ann Frank House, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) For decades, the most famous work of Holocaust literature, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK was required reading for many children. It is an important contribution to Holocaust literature in that it is one of the few primary sources that exists for a family’s day to day existence hiding from the Nazis.  Anne Frank’s papers were discovered after World War II and were edited by her father Otto, the only family member to survive extermination and published the diary in Dutch in 1947, and later in English in 1952.  There are many aspects of Anne Frank ..read more

(Crowds of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, Poland, 1942) The role of women during the Holocaust be it their experiences in the death camps, participants in the resistance, and the effect of Nazi atrocities on the families of victims has not received the attention it should.  Five years ago, Sarah Helms’ Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women was published and provided numerous insights into what women experienced in the camps, but their role in the resistance has not received the serious treatment that needed to be afforded until now with the publication of ..read more

(Otto Wachter) Who was Otto Wachter? According to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal at the conclusion of World War II he served as Hans Frank, the Governor-General of occupied Poland’s deputy, the Governor-General of Krakow, and a number of other positions in the SS and SD in Austria.  He was indicted for mass murder of at least 100,000 people, if not thousands upon thousands more.  Wachter is the subject of Philippe Sands latest book, THE RATLINE: LOVE, LIES, AND JUSTICE ON THE TRAIL OF A NAZI FUGITIVE, the “Ratline” was an organization that Wachter and the likes of Adolf Eichmann ..read more

(Adolf Hitler) At the outset of his new biography of Adolf Hitler, Brendan Simms points out that by 2000 over 120,000 books and articles have been written about the Nazi dictator.  The question then must be asked, why another?  Simms states in his introduction to HITLER: A GLOBAL BIOGRAPHY that conjecture concerning Hitler’s motivations that resulted in his rise to power, reorienting Germany toward Nazi domestic and foreign policy, and his ultimate defeat that have been examined since the 1950s by the likes of Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, Ian Kershaw, and more recently by Volker Ulri ..read more

(Zamosc, Poland as a ghetto during WWII) In 2004, the night of charitable gala for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Ben Solomon, a survivor of the Nazi death camps walks over to a guest and points a German Lugar P08 at his forehead.  The guest, Elliot Rosenzweig, a major Chicago philanthropist and supporter of the opera is supposedly a Holocaust survivor.  Solomon is tackled and arrested.  His motivation rests on his claim that Rosenzweig is a former SS officer named Otto Piatik who murdered Jews during the war.  Rosenzweig is incredulous but refuses to prosecute.  Solom ..read more

One of the questions that has been foremost in the minds of Holocaust historians and the Jewish community since World War II centers around the actions and policies of  President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Nazi agenda became clear resulting in millions of Jews perishing in the death camps.  In his latest book, THE JEWS SHOULD KEEP QUIET: FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE, AND THE HOLOCAUST, Rafael Medoff, the founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies augments traditional documentation of the Holocaust with recently discovered materials that ..read more